“He would prepare for us, Messieurs, extracts of meat, containing merely what is in sympathy and affinity with our bodies. Only the quintessence of beef and swine-flesh would be taken, merely the elixir of partridges and pullets, and everything that one swallowed could be digested. It is what I do not despair of succeeding in doing one day, Messieurs, in dwelling more on the study of medicine and chemistry than I have hitherto had the time to do.”
At these words from our host Monsieur Jérôme Coignard lifted his eyes from the Spartan broth on his plate, and looked uneasily at Monsieur d’Astarac.
“Even so our progress would still be inadequate,” continued the latter. “An honest man cannot without disgust eat the flesh of animals, and nations cannot call themselves civilised so long as slaughter-houses and butchers’ shops are to be found in their towns. But one day we shall know how to rid ourselves of these barbarous trades. When we know exactly the nutrient substances which are contained in the bodies of animals, it will become possible to draw these same substances out of the lifeless bodies, which will supply them abundantly. These bodies really contain all that is found in living beings, since the animal is formed from the vegetable, which in its turn has drawn its substance from lifeless matter.
“The next thing will be to nourish ourselves on extracts of metals and minerals suitably prepared by physicians. Have no fear the taste will be delicious and its absorption wholesome. Cooking will be done in retorts, and in alembics and we shall have alchemists as master-cooks. Are you not exceedingly anxious, Messieurs, to see these marvels? I promise you them in time to come. But you cannot yet grasp the excellent results they will effect.”
“Truly, Monsieur, I fail to grasp it.” said my good master, taking a drink of wine.
“Deign, in that case, to listen to me a moment,” said Monsieur d’Astarac. “Being no longer weighed down by slow processes of digestion men will become singularly agile, their sight will become wonderfully keen, and they will see ships gliding on the seas of the moon. Their understanding will be clearer, their manners will soften. They will advance greatly in the knowledge of God and nature. But one must face the changes which will not fail to be produced. Even the structure of the human body will be modified. It is a fact that for want of use organs dwindle and even end by disappearing. It has been observed that fish deprived of light become blind; and in Valais I have seen shepherds who, living only on curds and whey, lost their teeth very early; some amongst them never even had any. One cannot but admire nature in that particular; she suffers nothing useless to exist. When mankind feeds but on the infusions I have described, the intestines will not fail to become shorter by several ells, and the size of the stomach will be considerably diminished.”
“Upon my word,” said my good master, “you go too fast, Monsieur, and risk making a bad job of it! It has never vexed me that women should have a little of that, so long, as the rest was in proportion. It is a beauty which appeals to me. Do not inconsiderately prune it away.”
“Well, never mind about that. We will leave women’s waists and hips to shape themselves according to the canon of the Greek sculptors. That will be to please you, Monsieur l’Abbé, and in consideration of the needs of maternity; though, to speak candidly, I desire to make various changes on that point, of which I will speak to you some day.
To return to our subject, I ought to tell you that all I have told you up to the present is but feeling the way towards the true nourishment, which is that of the Sylphs, and the Spirits of the air. They drink in the light, which suffices to give a strength and wonderful supplenesss to their bodies. It is their only potion. One day it will be ours, Messieurs. It is merely a question of rendering potable the beams of the sun. I confess to not seeing with sufficient clearness the road to success, and I foresee numerous troubles and great obstacles in the way. If ever some sage attains this goal, mankind will equal the Sylphs and Salamanders in intelligence and beauty.”
My good master listened to these words sitting bowed in his seat, his head bent in sadness. He seemed to be pondering the changes in his appearance the nutrition imagined by his host would one day bring about.
“Monsieur,” said he at last, “did you not speak yesterday at the cook-shop of a certain elixir which dispenses with all other nourishment?”
“True,” said Monsieur d’Astarac, “but that liquor is only good for philosophers; by that you will readily conceive that its usage is restricted. It were better not to speak of it.”
However, a doubt troubled me, and I asked permission of my host to put it before him, certain that he would throw light upon it at once. He gave me permission to speak, and I said:
“Monsieur, these Salamanders who, as you say, are so beautiful and of whom, by your account, I have formed so charming a notion — have they had the misfortune to spoil their teeth by drinking light as the peasants of Valais have lost theirs by taking nothing but milk-food? I allow that I am anxious on the point.”
“My son,” replied Monsieur d’Astarac, “your curiosity pleases me, and I will satisfy it. Salamanders have no teeth, properly speaking. But their gums are furnished with two rows of very white and shining pearls, which lend an inconceivable grace to their smile. Know, then, that these pearls are but materialised light.”
I told Monsieur d’Astarac that I was very much relieved to hear it. He continued:
“Men’s teeth are a sign of their ferocity. When we feed as we ought these teeth will be replaced by some ornament like the Salamander’s pearls. Then we shall be unable to imagine how a lover could have looked without horror and disgust on the dog-teeth in his mistress’s mouth.”
VII
AFTER dinner our host led us into a large gallery adjoining his study and serving as a library.
There on oaken shelves were ranged an innumerable army, or rather a great council of books, duodecimos, octavos, quartos, folios, covered in calf, basil, morocco, parchment and pigskin. Six windows threw light on this silent gathering which stretched from one end of the apartment to the other the whole length of the high walls. Great tables, alternating with celestial globes and astronomical instruments, occupied the middle of the gallery. Monsieur d’Astarac begged us to choose the corner which seemed to us the most convenient for work.
But my good master, his mouth watering, his head thrown back, feasted his eyes and inhaled the very atmosphere of books.
“By Apollo!” he cried, “a magnificent library indeed! The library of my lord Bishop of Séez, rich as it is in works on the canon-law, cannot be compared to this. There is no resort more pleasing to my taste, not even the Elysian Fields described by Virgil. I make out at first glance so many rare works and so many precious collections that I doubt, Monsieur, if any private library can better this, which only yields in France to the Mazarin, and to the Royal. I go so far as to say, at the sight of the Greek and Latin manuscripts, which crowd this corner here, that after the Bodleian, the Ambrosian, the Laurentian and the Vatican, we may name the Astaracian. Without flattering myself I can scent truffles and books from afar, and I hold you from this moment for the equal of Peiresc, Grolier, and de Canevarius, princes among bibliophiles!”
“I out-top them all,” replied Monsieur d’Astarac calmly, “and this library is infinitely more precious than all those you have just named.
“The king’s library is but a book-pedlar’s lot besides mine, unless you merely reckon by number of volumes and mass of inked paper.
“Gabriel Naudé, and your Abbé Bignon, renowned as book collectors, in comparison with myself, were but indolent shepherds of a sheepish and ignoble flock of books.
“As to the Benedictines, I grant you they are industrious, but they have no nicety of discernment, and their libraries reflect the mediocrity of the minds that have formed them. My collection, Monsieur, is not on the model of these. The works which I have brought together form a whole which will not fail to procure me the Knowledge. It is gnostic, oecumenical, and spiritual. If all the lines traced on these
innumerable leaves of parchment and of paper could enter in due order into your brain, Monsieur, you would know all things, be capable of all things, you would be the master of nature, a worker in plasmic matter; you would hold the world between the two fingers of your hand as I hold these grains of snuff.”
Whereupon he offered his box to my good master.
“You are very good,” said Monsieur l’Abbé Coignard.
And letting his ravished gaze wander once more over this marshalled learning, he cried:
“There, between the third and fourth windows are shelves bearing an illustrious burden! The Oriental manuscripts are assembled and seem to converse in company! I can see that ten or twelve of them are very venerable under their rags of purple, and gold-brocaded silk. There are some who wear clasps of precious stones to their coats, like the Byzantine emperors. Others again are shut in plaques of ivory.”
“Those,” said Monsieur d’Astarac, “are the cabalists, Jew, Arabic and Persian. That is The Hand of Power you have just opened. Alongside you will find The Spread Table, The Faithful Pastor, Fragments of the Temple, and The Light in Darkness. One place is empty; that of The Still Waters, a precious treatise which Mosaïde is at the moment studying. Mosaïde, as I have already told you, Messieurs, is occupied in my house in discovering the most profound secrets contained in Hebrew writings, and, although more than a hundred years old, this rabbi is unwilling to die until he has penetrated the meaning of every cabalistic symbol. I am under great obligation to him; therefore I beg of you, Messieurs, to evince the same feelings towards him that I have myself.
“Enough of that, and now let us turn to what particularly concerns you. I thought, Monsieur l’Abbé, you might transcribe and put into Latin these Greek manuscripts of inestimable value. I have faith in your knowledge and in your zeal, and I do not doubt that your pupil will soon be of great help to you.”
And addressing himself to me:
“Yes, my son, I have great hopes of you. They are founded in great measure on the education you have received. For you were, so to speak, nourished in the flames, under a chimney-hood haunted by Salamanders. This circumstance has great weight.”
As he spoke he seized an armful of manuscripts which he placed on the table.
“This,” said he, pointing to a roll of papyrus, “comes from Egypt. It is a work of Zozimus the Panopolitan, which was thought to be lost, and which I myself found in the coffin of a priest of Serapis. And what you see there,” he added, showing us some shreds of shining and fibrous leaves on which Greek characters traced with a brush were dimly to be discerned, “are quite unheard of revelations which we owe, the one to Sophar the Persian, the other to John, arch-priest of St. Evagia.
“I shall be infinitely obliged to you if you will first of all busy yourself with these works. Afterwards we will study the manuscripts of Synesius, Bishop of Ptolémaïs, of Olympiodorus and Stephanus, which I found in Ravenna in a vault where they had been shut up, since the reign of the ignorant Theodosius, surnamed the Great.
“Messieurs, you will please first get an idea of what this vast work will mean. At the end of the room you will find, to the right of the fireplace, all the lexicons and grammars I have been able to collect, and these will be of some use to you. Permit me to leave you; there are four or five Sylphs awaiting me in my study. Criton will see that you want for nothing. Farewell.”
As soon as Monsieur d’Astarac was out of the room my good master sat down before the papyrus of Zozimus and arming himself with a magnifying-glass he had found on the table, began to decipher it. I asked him if he had not been surprised at all he had just heard.
He answered without raising his head:
“My son, I have known too many kinds of people and gone through too many changes of fortune to be astonished at anything.
“This gentleman appears to be mad, less because he is really so than because his thoughts are so excessively different from those of the vulgar. But if one paid attention to the conversation commonly held in this world one would find still less sense than in that of this philosopher. Left to itself, even the loftiest human reason builds its palaces and temples in the clouds, and truly Monsieur d’Astarac gathers a sufficiency of fog. There is no truth but in God; do not forget that, my son. But this verily is the book of Imouth which Zozimus the Panopolitan wrote for his sister Theosebia. What glory and what joy to read this unique manuscript found again in such wonderful fashion. I shall consecrate my days and my nights to it. I pity those ignorant men whose idleness throws them into debauchery. It is a miserable life they lead. What is a woman compared with an Alexandrian papyrus? Compare, I ask you, this most notable library with a wine-shop, the Petit Bacchus, and the handling this precious manuscript with the caresses one bestows on girls in an arbour, and tell me, my son, in which choice does true content abide? I, boon companion of the Muses, admitted to those wordless revels of meditation the orator of Madaura celebrated with eloquence, I give thanks to God that He has made me an honest man.”
VIII
FOR the space of a month or even six weeks Monsieur Coignard applied himself day and night as he had promised to reading Zozimus the Panopolitan. During meals, which we took at Monsieur d’Astarac’s table, the conversation ran but on the opinions of gnostics and on the knowledge of the ancient Egyptians. Being but a very ignorant scholar I gave my master little enough help. Still I busied myself in researches under his directions to the best of my ability; I took a certain pleasure in them. And we undoubtedly lived a happy and peaceful life. Towards the seventh week Monsieur d’Astarac gave me leave to go and see my parents at the cook-shop. The shop seemed to me strangely shrunk. My mother was there, alone and sad. She gave a loud cry when she saw me equipped like a young prince.”
“My Jacques,” she said, “I am happy indeed.” And she began to cry. We embraced one another. Then, wiping her eyes with a corner of her coarse apron:
“Your father,” she said, “is at the Petit Bacchus. He goes there a great deal since you left, for he takes less pleasure in his home now that you are away. He will be pleased to see you again. But tell me, my Jacquot, are you pleased with your new life? I have had my regrets that I let you go away with this nobleman. I even accused myself in confession, to Monsieur the third vicaire, of having preferred the good of your body to that of your soul, and of not having given enough thought to God in placing you out. Monsieur the third vicaire rebuked me kindly and exhorted me to follow the example of the virtuous women of Holy Scripture, of whom he named several to me, but those are names that I see plainly enough I shall never remember. He did not explain himself very fully, as it was Saturday night, and the church was full of penitents.”
I comforted my good mother as well as I could, and told her how Monsieur d’Astarac made me work at Greek, which is the language of the Gospel. This thought was pleasing to her. Nevertheless she was still troubled with cares.
“You will never guess, my Jacques,” she said to me, “who has been speaking to me of Monsieur d’Astarac. Why, Cadette Saint-Avit, the servant of the curé of St. Benoît. She comes from Gascony, from a place called Laroque-Timbaut, quite near St. Eulalie, where Monsieur d’Astarac is lord of the manor. Cadette St. Avit is old, you know, as a priest’s servant should be. When she was young and lived in that neighbourhood, she knew the three Messieurs d’Astarac, one of whom, captain of a ship, was drowned in the sea. He was the youngest. The second, colonel of a regiment, went to the war and was killed there. The eldest, Hercule d’Astarac, is the only survivor. It is this one then whom you are with, and for your good, my Jacques, at least I hope so. When young he was magnificent in his attire, liberal in his ways, but of a gloomy cast. He held aloof from public office, and did not seem eager to enter the king’s service as his brothers did, and there meet an honourable end. He was in the habit of saying that there was nothing glorious in bearing a sword at one’s side, that he knew no trade more ignoble than the noble career of arms, and that a village bone-setter, was, in his o
pinion, much above a brigadier or a marshal of France. Such was his talk. I must own that it does not seem either bad or mischievous to me, but rather bold and odd. Still it must in some measure be condemned, since Cadette St. Avit said that Monsieur the curé took exception to it, as contrary to the ordering of things established by God in the world, and as opposed to passages in the Bible, where God is called a name which means field-marshal. That would be a great sin. Monsieur Hercule held himself so aloof from the court that he refused to make the journey to Versailles to be presented to his majesty, as his birth warranted. He said:— ‘The king does not visit me. I shall not visit him.’ And it stands to reason, my Jacquot, that this is a most unnatural speech.”
My good mother looked at me with troubled interrogation, and then went on in the same way: “What I have still to tell you, my Jacquot, is even less credible. Yet Cadette St. Avit spoke of it as sure and certain. I will tell you that Monsieur Hercule d’Astarac, not leaving his domain, cared for nothing but the putting of sunlight into glass bottles. Cadette St. Avit did not know how he set about it, but of this much she is certain, that in the course of time, in these glass bottles well corked and warmed in a bain-marie, women were formed very tiny and beautifully made, and dressed like princesses in a play. You laugh, my Jacquot, yet one cannot joke at these things when one sees the consequences. It is a great sin to make creatures in this way who cannot be baptized and can never participate in eternal bliss. For you can scarcely imagine that Monsieur d’Astarac took these little dolls to the priests in their bottles to hold them over the baptismal font? They could never have found a god-mother.”
Complete Works of Anatole France Page 59